Catholic communion defended against both extremes, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…Catholick communion defended against both extreams, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…

§ 38. ['No Bishops are absolutely independent, but are obliged to preserve the Unity of the Episcopacy—Those Churches must be independent which have an independent Power and Government, as all must have that have independent Governors or Bishops; and independent Churches can never make one Body, and one Catholic Communion, because they are not Members of each other.

§ 38. ['No Bishops are absolutely independent, but are obliged to preserve the Unity of the Episcopacy—Those Churches must be independent which have an independent Power and Government, as all must have that have independent Governours or Bishops; and independent Churches can never make one Body, and one Catholick Communion, because they are not Members of each other.

Ans. 1. No Two Churches on Earth of the same species (Diocesan, or Parochial, &c.) are members of each other, but all of the Universal or National, of which they are parts; no more than your fingers or eyes are members of each other.

2. Reader, pardon me, that in the beginning I commended him, as being for Diocesan Independency in Power. These words make me again uncertain what he's for. Plain English would distinguish dependence of Subjects on Rulers in a Polity, and dependence of Equals by Concord in a Community: These are plain words. He after saith, that Diocesans have no proper Governors Ecclesiastic over them, or to that sense: But here he saith, they are not independent in Power and Government: Yet the man saith so little in any determinate sense, that I know not whether by [dependence in Government], he mean [a political dependence on superior Governors], or [a political Union of many persons to make one superior governing power (like a Senate), or a mere voluntary concord of many Governors that are Equals, like that of many School-Masters or Princes, whose Concord maketh them not One Polity, but One Community. The former sense some words of his do favour; but elsewhere he so much denieth them, that I hope it is but the last that he meaneth.